


The Only Comfort I Know Is In Our Hostility

by Polaroid_Memoir



Series: You Want Me To Fix You, But It's Never Enough [2]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Dysfunctional Relationships, Hate Sex, M/M, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:28:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24536998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polaroid_Memoir/pseuds/Polaroid_Memoir
Summary: Between the cheap booze, sweat, fighting and persistent frustration there's something neither of them can quite reach.----CW: Alcohol abuse as a coping mechanism for both characters.Set before the events of the game, Hank and Gavin provide each other with the only comfort they can, and boy is it unhealthy.
Relationships: Hank Anderson/Gavin Reed
Series: You Want Me To Fix You, But It's Never Enough [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1780840
Comments: 17
Kudos: 45





	1. Fatalist

“How come we always end up like this?” Hank’s question permeated the uneasy and yet somehow comfortably familiar silence of their afterglow, such as it were.

“I’m not in the mood for your philosophising dickhead, can’t you just let us rest?” Gavin shot back exacerbated. The few minutes after they both came were the only peace he could get these days, and he certainly couldn't stand it when Hank ruined it with his brooding. 

“Aw, does baby need his quiet time?” Hank mocked. 

“Shut the fuck up! Why are you like this?” 

“But you keep coming back to me, that’s kinda my point,” Hank said, staring down at him and locking their gaze together.

“Shut up!” Gavin hid his face behind his hand so Hank’s eyes couldn’t pierce him further, he continued in a whisper, “I don’t want to think.”

“Sorry, my old man ears didn’t catch that.”

“Fuck off!” He pushed Hank off of him and sat up, “I said I don’t want to think about it!” 

He got up, scanning the floor to locate his clothes, picking them up one piece at a time from where they’d been carelessly discarded mere moments before and got dressed. 

It was always like this, they pissed each other off so much that they could barely stand each other, they parted, then at work they’d clash and gnaw at each other over and over until they ended up in the bathroom of a dive bar, or that one alleyway a couple blocks away, or most of the time back at Gavin’s shitty apartment because it was nearby. 

Gavin always came at him angry, because he was always angry, he didn’t know any other way to be. But Hank, he could take it, absorb it, when no one else could, he seemed to feed off of it even. Suck out all the bile and aggression in a flurry of booze, and closed fists, and teeth, and flesh, until, for a few blissful moments he was totally placid. 

But today he just had to fucking ruin it. 

Gavin cursed under his breath as he walked the short distance from his bed to the fridge. He wasn’t drunk enough. He grabbed another beer and made for his couch, he just wanted to think less. He cracked the can open and slammed it back in one, maybe that would do the trick. 

He heard Hank moving around now, getting dressed probably, but he really didn’t give a shit. He stared down through the opening of the can at the dregs of beer at the bottom, his gaze becoming unfocussed as the tingle of inebriation started to creep up his neck into the base of his skull, just what he was waiting for. 

“I’m leaving,” Hank announced standing near the door. 

“Good. Fuck off.” Gavin replied, still staring into the can. 

“You won’t find any answers in there, you know that right?”

“That’s fucking rich coming from you. Fucking hypocrite. Get lost.”

“Fine,” Hank left slamming the door behind him. 

He hated Hank, but more than that, he hated how much he needed him. He was too much of a fuck up for anyone else. 

“We end up like this because we deserve each other,” Gavin said, finally answering Hank’s question only, he wasn’t there to hear it.


	2. Optimist

Hank left the precinct at the end of his shift exhausted as all hell. The case was absolutely fucked and he wasn't getting any leads, and to make things worse, as he hauled himself down the road towards his car he heard footsteps following him. He turned his head to see Gavin. 

“Leave me alone, I don’t need your bullshit tonight,” He said, maintaining his pace. 

“What’re you gonna do if I don’t leave?”

“I swear I’ll fucking sock you, just let me be,” He warned with all the energy he could muster. 

“What, you got somethin’ better to do? A date with a whiskey bottle or two? Wanna drown out those old memories some more?” 

That was it. Hank stopped dead in his tracks then turned, and in one fluid motion he punched Gavin square in the center of his face. His fist ached terribly afterward, but Gavin... Gavin was fucked. He swayed from the force of the impact, blood trickling down from one nostril. Hank wasn’t sure if he’d busted Gavin’s nose, and for a beat he thought he’d taken it too far. 

But only for a beat, Gavin stabilised himself and gripped the bridge of his nose, checking it, “You cocksucker! You’re lucky it isn’t broken!”

“Bet it’ll bruise pretty though, is that what you wanted?”

“I fuckin’ hate you!” Gavin spat, but he got closer nonetheless, right up into Hank’s personal space, and he knew what was coming next. Gavin’s mouth crashed into his, desperate, and they wrestled. He tasted of shitty station coffee mixed with the metallic tang of fresh blood, repulsive, but Hank kept going. Gavin always put on a good show of fighting but ultimately he submitted, he always did. 

This was the ugly pattern they fell into. Ever since that night at the annual DPD outing he got dragged to by Fowler six months ago, all under the pretence that it’d ‘Do him some good to get out once in a while’. A fat lot of good it did. 

It landed him exactly here, in this sorry excuse for a _”relationship”_ , though he was hesitant to call it that, but he didn’t really know what it was. They fought a lot, and they fucked a lot, and that was about it. 

At the time he was just trying to put Gavin in his place, take him down a few pegs. He wasn’t thinking clearly in his booze soaked state when he grappled Gavin in the men's room of the forth bar and slammed him into a wall. And it wasn’t until Gavin keened beneath him that he realised something else was going on. All that aggression was a misdirected expression of Gavin’s attraction, and before he had a chance to contemplate it, he was already jacking Gavin off in the bathroom stall. 

He hoped that it would be a one off, one fucked up moment of regulation breaking fraternisation that would be lost to the foggy haze of the night.

But it wasn’t. It was like an eternal hangover that gripped him and wouldn’t leave. 

The problem was he always gave in, no matter how aggressive and repugnant Gavin was, no matter how much of a complete reprehensible asshole he managed to be. Hank always gave in. 

Because, whatever Gavin was feeling, whatever he might be going through, or whatever unprocessed shit he was holding onto, it was clear that everything in him was screeching out with the pain of isolation. A pain Hank recognised the shape of, a pain that resembled the shape of his own, different in content, but extremely familiar. 

And so he let Gavin in again, gave him what he wanted. On some level he prayed that somehow he could reach through all the bile and years of antagonism and make a genuine connection. 

He hoped that maybe, that was what Gavin needed. 

Because he needed it too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit made on 07/06/2020 to length of relationship from two years to six months. I've got more I want to add to this fic and the timeline makes more sense this way.⭐


End file.
